Nicole Jones Development is a leading full-service economic development firm in Huntsville, Alabama. Nicole Jones Development provides professional consulting services for businesses, nonprofits, and local governments in the areas of Economic Development, Business Development and Branding, and Commercial Real Estate Project Development.

Silicon Valley’s Real Estate Crunch Is A Golden Opportunity For Other American Cities

When Curse CEO Hubert Thieblot told his employees last year that he was moving the company’s San Francisco headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama last year, they thought he was crazy.

About 20 of his employees quit because they didn’t want to relocate.

“It was very controversial,” said Thieblot, who had lived and run the company out of San Francisco for at least five years. “A lot of people did not like me for that decision.”

But today, the profitable, 110-person person company operates out of an Alabama city with a population of just under 200,000 people and the highest number of Ph.Ds per square mile given Huntsville’s history with NASA as the nation’s “Rocket City.” Curse just closed $16 million in funding earlier this week too from the China-centric venture firm GGV Capital.

“If you want to build a long-term company, you might have a better chance of keeping people outside of San Francisco,” Thieblot said. “The job market is too crazy here.”

Indeed, the cost of living and commercial real estate is also pricing smaller startups out of San Francisco. I’m seeing bootstrapped founders, who have yet to a take full round of funding, trickle into surrounding cities like Oakland, Daly City and the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, if they’re not considering urban hubs in other parts of the country altogether.

“If you’re trying to bootstrap, being based in San Francisco is awful,” he said. “The leading cause of startup death is running out of money. Moving to a cheap city and doubling (or more!) your company’s runway will more than likely vastly increase your chances of eventual success.”

Are we supposed to cry for these entrepreneurs, like the teachers, public servants, artists and the elderly who have already faced several decades of gentrification in San Francisco?

While the rest of the country is only starting to see the kind of job recovery that may make the Federal Reserve finally raise interest rates later this year, the San Francisco Bay Area is bursting at the seams.

“His family’s in Texas. He’s got a nice house. If he had it in the Bay Area, it would cost millions of dollars,” Citron said. “He was commuting for awhile, but that was hard. The Bay Area is at capacity. It’s freaking expensive.” (And by the way, why is housing affordable in Texas? Houston had more housing starts than all of California in the first quarter of this year. Am I saying we should be Houston? No. I’m just pointing out policy trade-offs.)

“It’s been a good thing for us,” she said. “We’ve been looking to hire engineers and it’s just really hard to do it here because it’s so competitive and expensive. But he has a network and is able to find talent there.”

Some of the Valley’s best-known investors are also encouraging geographic diversification. Andreessen Horowitz is incubating a startup called Teleport, which will help knowledge workers improve their quality of life by moving to places that maximize the difference between their cost of living and take-home pay. Marc Andreessenrecently published an essay in Politico, arguing that other regions across the U.S. should remove regulatory hurdles around specific technologies they want to attract — be they self-driving car, stem cell or Bitcoin-related startups.

Is this bad for the Valley over the long-run?

Between giants like Google, Facebook and Apple and then later-stage companies like Uber, Square, Dropbox and Twitter, the region has a healthy mix of employers.

Yet the heated real estate market favors capital-rich, growth-stage companies right now, often at the expense of other kinds of creative experimentation, be it a longstanding artist’s collective or a not-yet-Ramen-profitable entrepreneur. The cost of living and the competition for talent simply doesn’t give startups a lot of time to find product-market fit here unless they’ve raised a lot of capital.

In contrast, Google, founded in 1998, and Facebook, founded in 2004, came of age when the Valley was weathering slower economic times and it was easier and cheaper to form a cluster of AAA technical talent inside any single company.

Is that worrisome? Maybe a little. When you look at other cities that have historically been dependent on a single industry like Detroit, the population declines started after power consolidated to a handful of companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler, which then began distributing their plants around the country in the 1950s to avoid the risk of production disruptions from worker strikes. (These changes predated competition from Asian auto manufacturers by at least a generation.) Ideally, you want a mix of firm sizes, and younger and older companies.

Cities have to maintain a certain equilibrium between people moving out and people moving in. Right now, the escalating costs and sheer limits of Bay Area’s housing and transit infrastructure are tilting that balance back out to the rest of the country.

So if you’re a mayor of another U.S. city and you want to attract jobs, now would be a good time to drop by a Y Combinator or 500 Startups demo day to make a pitch.

Content marketing is the most effective and lucrative form of online marketing, because it not only works, it also builds a media asset at the same time. So it makes sense to understand exactly what makes content effective, right?

Meaningful content is an experience

Content (what you say) without copywriting (how you say it) can be a complete waste of otherwise valuable information. But no matter how you say it, what you say has to have meaning to the right people.

Reaction: Your ideal prospect believes he can now write more efficiently

Action: Your ideal prospect implements your productivity tips

The action taken can vary. It can be acting directly on your advice, sharing your content, buying your software that helps implement the advice, buying your book for more details, or hiring you as a personal productivity coach.

At this point, your content is truly meaningful and truly aligned with your objectives. There’s only one level that’s better.

Source: Huntsville CityBlog, Written by Mark McCarter

The $25-million Zierdt Road construction project is on time, on schedule, and on budget

Mayor Tommy Battle likes to say he has good news and bad news about the major road construction under way throughout Huntsville.

“The good news is we are spending a half billion dollars to improve your roads,” says Battle, “and the bad news is we are spending a half billion dollars to improve your roads.”

Orange cones are a common site across the City of Huntsville, and the widening of Zierdt from Martin Road to Madison Blvd., a 3 ½ -mile stretch, is one of the major road construction efforts, serving some 16,500 motorists daily. The City’s goal is to maintain an average 18-minute commute for residents, and the improvements to Zierdt Road will facilitate that.

Residents using Zierdt Road may be somewhat bewildered by the current lull in activity, but in reality that has happened because good weather and site conditions enabled the contractor to finish the most recent task “ahead of schedule and significantly under budget,” according to Kathy Martin, director of engineering for the City of Huntsville.

That’s great news to the City Council Member representing District 5, Will Culver, who considers the improvements of Zierdt Road one of his major priorities.”

The Zierdt Road project has been an ambitious undertaking involving the City of Huntsville, City of Madison, Madison County, Redstone Arsenal and the State of Alabama. Federal funds are covering 80 percent of the $25 million dollar price tag, with the City of Huntsville paying 15 percent of the cost and the City of Madison chipping in five percent.

Federally funded projects usually take about eight to nine years from conception to construction. The City started design in 2007. After a number of public meetings with residents of the area, city officials heard an overwhelming desire for a multi-use path for bikes and walking and for improved intersection function. The City agreed and worked to incorporate public wishes into the design. Obtaining the land for a 12-foot path and improved intersections has required the purchase of additional right-of-way, and the State of Alabama has been tasked with acquiring the needed land.

“While we’re going above and beyond, in the end it is really going to be great so people can bike, walk and jog along that stretch of roadway,” Culver says. “It’s going to be awesome.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?

The city is currently awaiting permit approvals, utility relocations and cost estimates for the next phase, which will involve culvert extension, construction of transition lanes, and a new roadway across Lady Ann Lake near Edgewater. The City is monitoring the progress of these efforts on a weekly basis and residents should see a new round of construction in January.

WHAT’S THE TIMELINE?

The Zierdt Road construction, which began in 2013, was separated into four phases to expedite the work on land that was available for construction. “We’ve made significant progress, and we’ve performed three years of work earlier than expected by phasing the project,” Martin says.

Phase 1: Clearing for the northbound lanes was along Redstone Arsenal property which began in 2013.

Phase 2: Relocating Redstone Arsenal security fencing began in 2014. Half of this stretch of Zierdt Road is on Redstone property.

Phase 3: Northbound lanes are 95 percent complete. Construction activity will begin in January to transition traffic to the new northbound lanes in preparation for the next phase of work on the southbound lanes. The City anticipates utility relocation will be complete and all permits approved by the end of this year.

Phase 4: This phase will involve construction of the southbound lanes, multi-use path, and intersection improvements at Martin Road and Madison Boulevard. The State of Alabama is completing the right-of-way acquisition for this phase to begin. Construction is expected to start next summer (2017) and finish within 2.5 years to provide for a completed Zierdt Road project.

You don’t even notice them until you make it a mission to go find them. Then you can’t help see them everywhere you drive, big and small, well-reinforced or bordered by vegetation.

Hundreds of miles of ditches, weaving through Huntsville like the body’s circulatory system, are an unnoticed yet essential part of the city’s infrastructure. There are 250-plus ditches in the city of varying breadth, length and function.

As Joy McKee, Director of Landscape Management for the City of Huntsville, says, “All ditches are not created equal.”

They come with various labels and challenges.

They also come – most important for citizens to recognize — with shared responsibility. The city’s primary task is to keep the water flowing. The residents’ task is to perform whatever landscaping work they might choose.

Likely as not, the ditch in your world is yours. The vast majority of ditches in the city are on private property. They might be 50-50 shared with your neighbor, or maybe just one bank is on your side. It’s your responsibility for mowing and minor upkeep.

Even if it’s, say, a concrete ditch the city has built to alleviate draining problems, it’s yours as far as your property extends, and your choice on how it’s landscaped.

The city is not shirking responsibility. That’s merely common sense at play. But as noted by as Brian Walker, supervisor in the Landscape Management office, the City of Huntsville has often gone above and beyond in helping residents with maintenance.

Let’s take a narrow ditch that slices through English Village. Rows of fenced-in yards line both sides. When the city reinforced the ditch as a small concrete culvert, residents may have believed it had become city property and city responsibility.

However, members of Walker’s staff visited the neighborhood, going door-to-door to explain the situation. Walker then agreed to send a crew into the ditch area to eliminate growth and make it a simple enough task for residents to maintain afterward.

“We try to help everybody when we can,” Walker says.

As with much of City of Huntsville, the operation is a partnership. Maintaining the ditches is shared between Landscape Management, the Department of Public Works and Department of Engineering, each utilizing its skill-set for whatever unique challenge might be presented.

Public Works is called upon to repair ditches threatened by erosion. Because, as McKee puts it, “We don’t have the big-boy toys,” Public Works uses its machinery for major clean-up, like fallen trees or large debris that inhibit water flow. Landscape Management does clean-up work, whether through machinery or the careful use of what Walker calls “low-volatility chemicals.” As he says, “We want to encourage the good grasses to stay and the bad grasses to go.”

The largest ditches are owned by the Corps of Engineers. They’re called “blue-line ditches,” have more water and are most often considered creeks. The city’s role typically involves enlisting contractors to manage them and their larger tributaries, though it’s often difficult to wade through the permit process necessary with federally owned property.

The second group includes the ditches owned by the city. They are natural ditches or concrete culverts, and usually are bordered up to the creek banks by private property. The city maintains the concrete and makes sure there is not debris that obstructs water flow.

The last group includes the majority of ditches, the easements. They are ones that are totally on private property or maintained through a home-owners’ association. The city’s concern with them is the efficient flow of water, and it will take steps to correct that if a problem occurs.

“We do limited amount of maintenance,” McKee says. “All we’re required to do is make sure the water flows. Just because there is vegetation doesn’t mean water isn’t flowing.”

Walker reminds residents that the best avenue to address problems with ditches is through Huntsville Connect, the City’s service request app that filters residents’ concerns and funnels them to the proper departments.

Today we were privileged to attend the Downtown Rescue Mission’s Groundbreaking for the Owen House, a facility to assist area women and children starting in 2018. The building will serve as an emergency shelter as well as transitional housing.

Benaroya Lane is now open, which was truly a collaborative effort between the public and private sector. Thank you to the City of Huntsville, Alabama Department of Transportation, South Huntsville Business Association, and the private property owners who donated land to make this road project happen.

Benaroya Lane connects Martin Road to Byrd Spring Road and serves as entrance for Redstone Arsenal commuters into Main Street South, Office Park South, hotels, and retail-oriented shops. The Benaroya Connector allows patrons to access many south Huntsville businesses more easily during the ongoing South Parkway construction.